Oscar’s love affair with the often overrated Clint Eastwood will likely continue with Invictus, a movie that uses sports as a metaphor for reconciliation -- like we haven’t seen that before. Set in South Africa, just after Nelson Mandela is released from prison and becomes the head of state, the movie tells of the newly elected president’s efforts to inspire the country’s sloppy rugby team, the Springboks, and rally the people -- both black and white -- around them.

As they did with the appalling Gran Torino, Eastwood loyalists will likely have little trouble getting behind this periodically moving and calculatingly inspirational cry for awards, while forgiving the director of the film’s many faults. At least this time around there are some reasons for applause, namely Tom Stern’s crisp shooting style (the camera is where it should be at any given moment), Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens’ rousing score and Morgan Freeman’s impeccable impersonation of Mandela’s posture and cadence. However, an impersonation is all it really is, as Freeman, who actively sought out this role and actually made much of it happen, is merely mimicking a public figure as opposed to giving life to a rounded character. Much of the fault lays with Anthony Peckham’s simplistic, cliché-riddled screenplay, which writes Mandela as a man who always knows what’s best (we don’t doubt that he did) and always speaks -- even to his own daughter -- as if he’s giving an official address to the nation. Apparently, Mandela was a politician at home too. That leaves Matt Damon, playing Springbok’s captain, Francois Pienaar, as the man to give us some dramatic arc. Damon acquits himself well, delivering the best Afrikaans accent we could expect of him and giving the movie as much emotional juice as he could in his limited role. Other actors fare much worse as Eastwood’s quick-as-lightening shooting style, known to leave little time for rehearsals and multiple takes, leaves them hanging with melodramatic and obtuse bit parts.

It was a wise decision to focus on one aspect of Mandela’s inspirational leadership as opposed to a complete biopic. It narrows both the country’s dilemma and the president’s aura to a focused scope and makes it easier on the audience to appreciate. However, the film takes things too easy, reducing tensions to undemanding and undercooked oppositions between blacks and whites, particularly between the president’s bodyguards, with no shades in between. Suffice to say that the tensions are resolved effortlessly -- rugby, or Hollywood can resolve all problems -- and the undulating joy that’s delivered at the film’s championship finale feels as synthetic as the digitally rendered fans in the stadium.